~ The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies

Volume 1.1, 2005

The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have long fascinated scholars who explore representations of gender, marriage, and power within this canonical work. This article argues that the Wife represents more than a transversal of power in marriage from men to women based on sexual prowess, but rather the Prologue and the Tale can be read as a proposal for a redefinition of marriage and the power distribution within it.

Dante’s Inferno guides the reader along with Dante the pilgrim and Virgil through hell, purgatory, and heaven through parodies of and numerous analogies to music and musical instruments. This article analyses how the various psalms, hymns and songs in Dante’s masterpiece offer a musical sub-structure that reflects and reinforces Dante’s moral message.

Icons have the ability to convey a sense of the divine to even the most agnostic of observers. This article sheds light on the transcendental nature of icons by arguing that the spatial construction of iconic images allows the viewer to experience a form of divine vision that transcends the human constraints of time and space. Thus the experience of viewing an icon becomes a transcendental experience in itself.